


The Idealist

by elle_stone



Category: Rent - Larson
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-10-03
Updated: 2006-10-03
Packaged: 2017-11-06 05:10:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/415060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_stone/pseuds/elle_stone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the elevator stalls, suddenly, between the fourth and fifth floors, Roger sighs and sits down in the corner to wait.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Idealist

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2006 for challenge number 246, to write a fic that takes places in an elevator, on the speed_rent community on livejournal. 
> 
> The title is taken from Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men:
> 
> "What you don't know don't hurt you, for it ain't real. They called that Idealism in my book I had when I was in college, and ever after I got hold of that principle Little Jackie was an Idealist."

Roger hasn’t spoken to Mark in two weeks. It’s not personal, really—Mark knows this—or, at least, he’s pretty sure it’s not. But Roger’s been sullen and silent to everyone, and it’s Mark who’s always around, Mark who never goes to work, Mark who’s waiting to be fired, Mark who makes excuses to stay home so Roger doesn’t have to be alone. It’s Mark who takes the brunt of this low, burning anger. It’s Mark who’s pressing the button next to the elevator and waiting for the doors to open to usher them in.

 

Roger has his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the floor and he looks like he hasn’t slept in months.

 

“I hate hospitals, too,” Mark tells him.

 

The elevator is empty when they step in. Mark presses the button for the seventh floor.

 

Roger leans back against the wall and crosses his legs at the ankles. Mark digs his hands into his pockets and counts the numbers as they light up.

 

One. Two. Three.

 

He found her. That’s what the problem is. He was the one who opened the door; whose bare feet touched the water overflowing the side of the tub; whose hand reached out to touch the cool, pale skin of hers; who was kneeling there shaking when Roger came home.

 

Roger is the type of person who would not believe that something was true until he saw it; who would believe that if he does not see it, it is not true; who would believe that if he had not found her dead then she would not be dead.

 

When the elevator stalls, suddenly, between the fourth and fifth floors, Roger sighs and sits down in the corner to wait.

 

Five minutes later, he breaks the stale, thick, claustrophobic silence. He says, “I’m not going.”

 

Mark isn’t sure how to answer. He feels vaguely like yelling, shouting about addiction and rehab and dying and AIDS, and about hope, too, and about love. But really, it is Roger who should be telling Mark about these things. And the most Roger has said to him in 14 days is I’m not going.

 

“To her funeral, I mean.”

 

Mark was stuck in an elevator once before, when he was eight. His mother had taken him to the city, to see some overpriced and overrated optometrist who told him exactly what his last optometrist had said, and on the way up to his office the elevator had broken down. They’d been in there for an hour. Mark had thought at the time that he could never be more scared and, after it was over, the thought had strengthened him.

 

“Are you going?”

 

“Probably.”

 

“You didn’t even like her.”

 

“I did.”

 

They sound so dull. Roger is almost accusing, almost angry, and Mark is almost defensive. But mostly it is just silence and heavy, overused air covering their voices and drowning out their tones.

 

“I hated her a little, at the end,” Mark admits, finally. It is the one declaration that echoes, that rings true.

 

The elevator starts again as quickly as it stopped, and soon they are opening the doors and a short, pale looking woman with stringy brown hair is telling them she’s sorry for the mishap, and Mark is trying to smile, and Roger is scuffing the shining linoleum floor, and all of the hallways are opening up around them, hospital noises beckoning. 

 

But before that, as they moved from the fifth to the sixth floor, Roger pulled himself standing and asked, “Have you always hated hospitals?”

 

“No.”

 

“Me neither.”


End file.
